Very fun anachronistic hacker VN, unfortunately let down by the conventions of its genre. I can wholeheartedly recommend the first 75%-ish of it, but I have two major sticking points, one fair and one unfair.
So, play the game. Give it a go, and I'll start with my unfair point. Everything beneath the line is eldritch rambling, though.
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Despite one of the game's main characters being 'trans girl 4chan' (no, as in like... there's no time. You'll figure it out), when a transfemme Z3R0D4Y comes out to Nyarlothotep, their early experiences with queerness are, universally, transmasc 'lesbians' (their quotes, not mine).
Minor... teensy... tiny little quibble... but do the developers thing transgender women were invented in the 2010s? And, if so, how come creepypasta and GME get imported but we don't?? We have tgirl abusebait miserable dollgirl [spoiler]Alice[/spoiler], but our MC has never encountered another (human) trans woman???
This is obviously not intentional, and quite unfair. I do not expect FFG to cure transmisogyny. That being said... this feels like something that should have been caught by any trans woman in the writers room. (So help me god, if the answer is "but we don't have any"...)
Now to be fair and balanced, but also super spoiler-y, let's talk about the endgame.
First, I will get this out of the way. I actively predicted the final-ish moment of control in the game, shouting out to my partner [spoiler]"I swear to god, if this all ends with another ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ game of minesweeper"[/spoiler]... and it did, indeed, do that. Hilarious. Hopefully an intentional anticlimax.
Where things get weird is in the politics of the epilogues, for which the original sin is the concept of completionism, nay, 'true endings', nay, the first video game being made.
Your final major choice is deciding [spoiler]which of the four old ones to ascend to the throne[/spoiler]. It's been stated and overstated that: 1. [spoiler]Whoever ascends will gain godlike, reality warping power.[/spoiler] and 2. [spoiler]Any god who you've good-ended(?) will go against their worse instincts if ascended.[/spoiler]
Naturally, when given the non-choice between [spoiler]Punk Rock Murder Victim[/spoiler], [spoiler]Abused TGirl with Dreams of a Better World[/spoiler], [spoiler]Mass Murderer[/spoiler], and [spoiler]Mass Murderer (Japan)[/spoiler], I chose the first two. Throughout the game, they were labeled [spoiler]Gods of ~Chaos~[/spoiler], but our conversations showed how that's clearly pretty reductive, and both their edges had been sanded down a bit. What do I get? [spoiler]Burning cities in the first world, and vague promises that "They're working on it.".[/spoiler] ?????????
So, despite having [spoiler]the power to warp reality[/spoiler], the best they can do is [spoiler]bend some bullets to protect their totally mundane militia[/spoiler], and this somehow results in [spoiler]random cities on the east coast of America burning down.[/spoiler] This? This is a deeply imperialist view of revolution. Especially considering in the giga centrism ending, [spoiler]THE THRONE MIND CONTROLS THE AMERICAN GOVERNMENT TO BE UN-EVIL, ARE WE JOKING RIGHT NOW?![/spoiler]
Oh? The giga-centrism ending? Haven't you forgotten? Every visual novel with ~choices~ needs an ending where you make NO choices, and since it requires the most 'work', it must be the best. Cherry on top? [spoiler]IN THIS ONE, THE 'GOLDEN ROUTE' OPENS WITH A LENGTHY, SACCHARINE MONOLOGUE FROM A TRANSGENDER MURDER VICTIM ABOUT HOW EVERYONE, MURDER VICTIMS AS WELL AS THE INVENTORS OF THE TORMENT NEXUS, ARE REALLY THE SAME, DEEP DOWN.[/spoiler]
[spoiler]IF YOU THINK ABOUT IT, ISN'T [b]DIVISION[/b] THE REAL PROBLEM WITH [b][i][u]SLAVERY?!?!?!?!?!?[/u][/i][/b][/spoiler]
These are the very unfortunate consequences of this format. If half your characters are deeply evil people who 'feel weally weally bad abowt it', and you insist on having a golden path with a clean, narrative throughline, you end up with a game where the 'good ending' involves [spoiler]A BLACK NONBINARY PERSON BEING DIGITALLY ENSLAVED BY A WHITE, PATRIOTIC, 'GOOD OLD BOY' AND FORCED TO SING KUMBAYAH WITH HIM[/spoiler] BECAUSE, DEEP DOWN, WE ALL WANT THE SAME THING, DON'T WE?
NO. WE DON'T. YOU CANNOT 'Soooowwy' YOUR WAY OUT OF BUILDING THE TORMENT NEXUS, AND THE AMOUNT OF LENIENCY THIS GAME EXPECTS YOU TO FEEL VERGES ON IMPERIALIST PROPAGANDA.
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So, uh... yeah, I don't think the devs were ready to dive into something this political? I haven't played their other stuff, but it doesn't seem like their usual thing. It's like, funny, but the gestures towards politics it makes are vapid at best and disgusting at worst
